Vixen: Episode 4

This was definitely the best episode so far! If you've been on the fence over whether or not to watch, then this is the instalment that should help you make up your mind. But come on, these episodes are only five minutes long! Surely no one is that strapped for time.

So we're all caught up with the cold opening of the first episode: Mari is fleeing Oliver and Barry and giving them a run for their money. It's fantastic, as she's blatantly more powerful than their efforts combined. The best they can manage is just to keep up with her.

I kept waiting for her to slip up or the boys to get the upper hand – and it never happened! She backhands Barry with the strength of an elephant, she catches one of Oliver's arrows, she hides from them with chameleon powers, and even sasses Arrow with his own catchphrase: "I know, I know – I failed my city."

She does eventually tumble from a building while dodging one of Oliver's nets (nice one, dude – you almost killed her!) but last week's episode foreshadowed the possibility of flight, and here the promise is fulfilled when she saves herself from certain death by channelling a falcon.

I honestly expected this scenario to end with either Oliver or Barry restraining Mari and forcing her to speak with them (how easy would it have been for the writers to have Barry catch Mari when she fell from that building as a way of gaining her trust?) and I noted with interest that there's already an entry on the show's TV tropes page stating that Barry should have been able to catch up with her, and only didn't because he was too distracted by the powers of her necklace.

My point is that even if he could have stopped her on a Watsonian level, the writers Doylistically made the decision to let Mari come out of this encounter better off. This is her show, and the narrative keeps her the most powerful person in it.

And that's very much appreciated.

Finally, Mari heads back to the university – but the trap is sprung and the mysterious woman we saw two episodes ago arrives to claim the necklace. I have no idea how they're going to wrap all this up in ten minutes.  

Miscellaneous Observations:

Mari flew! That was awesome.

Oliver tells Barry: "You throw [meta-humans] in your pipeline prison." No doubt the dodgiest thing about The Flash is that captive meta-humans are locked in the basement of Star Labs without standing trial (or without any visible means of nourishing, supervising or rehabilitating them) – so I'm glad it got critiqued here, however briefly. Or maybe I should be more perturbed that the showrunners clearly know it's a terrible concept but aren't going to do anything about it.

Not that it wasn't obvious before, but now it's official: Mari is not a meta-human and her necklace is definitely magical.

We also get to her Felicity's voice, and something about a fern... I really need to catch up on Arrow as that's obviously an in-joke.